On Terrorism: Retail and Wholesale
By Ed Kinane
12/03/08 We keep hearing certain words — “democracy” is one, “terrorism”
is another — that are
seldom defined. The pretense is that we all know what these words mean.
Yet that’s hardly the case.
Here’s how the U.S. State Department defines terrorism: the use of
violence or the threat of
violence to harm or intimidate civilians for political purposes.
Given all the commentary out there about terrorism, you’d think this pithy
definition might
often be invoked. It seldom is. Why? Because applying that definition
evenhandedly — to *****s
each violent episode or campaign, regardless of who perpetrates it — would
boomerang. It would
expose terrorists who usually aren’t thought of as terrorists.
Retail terrorism — like abduction or suicide bombing — is a tactic of the
hardware have-nots.
It gets all the attention. Wholesale terrorism — invasion and aerial
warfare, for example — is
the strategy of the haves. It has a bigger budget and cuts a huger swathe.
By some magic
consensus wholesale terrorism never, never gets called terrorism.
Now, the State Department definition is pretty good. But it needs to make
clear that terrorists
use all levels of technology. A box cutter can perpetrate terrorism; so
can a “smart” bomb.
Just because it’s high tech doesn’t mean it isn’t terrorism.
Terrorism need not target civilians directly. Often it targets the
infrastructure that sustains
human life – hospitals, electrical grids, water purification and sewage
systems, etc.
In the U.S. we assume only the other guys use terrorism — never our side.
Judging by our media
and our politicians, terrorists are only those who oppose powerful
military machines. Even if
those terrorists are defending their land.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, our military industrial complex no
longer has its bogeyman.
These days instead of the Red Menace, Swarthy Terrorists are the enemy.
For U.S. people 9/11 was the watershed, the iconic, terrorist event. This
serves the
neo-conservative world-dominating agenda. 9/11 was the neo-cons’ answered
prayer, their Pearl
Harbor and Gulf of Tonkin.
A frightened public is so much easier to mobilize for a bellicose,
expansionistic foreign
policy. Such policy — and the lies promoting it — led the U.S. into the
Iraq quagmire and back
into the civilian massacring business.
In a further victory for the neo-con agenda, the so-called war on terror
erodes civil liberties
here at home. Further, it erodes our quality of life. The war on terror
diverts resources from
health, education and other human needs to the military.
Military adventurism makes us less safe. It generates even more fear. In a
self-perpetuating
cycle, war spawns further terrorism: reactive terrorism. So does military
occupation, whether
in Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine.
In the past century most war dead were civilians. They were victims of
terrorism — not in the
mainstream media sense, but in the U.S. State Department sense.
Tens of millions of civilians have been killed by bullets, shells,
missiles, cluster bombs and,
in Iraq, many are also being killed by toxic and radioactive depleted
uranium.
Depleted uranium is just one of kind of nuclear weapon. As the world
learned at Hiro****ma,
Nukes don’t distinguish civilian from military. Nuclear blackmail has been
with us for over 60
years.
Some nations stockpile nuclear weapons. (Remember, the threat of violence
is also terrorism.)
These devices are delivered by artillery or aircraft which few
“terrorists” have access to. One
might say aerial warfare by its very nature is terrorist.
Militarism, of course, yields enormous cor****ate profits. These days war
profiteering is rife.
Some of these profits finance the purchase of TV networks and other
cor****ate sources of news.
For example, the war and nuclear contractor, General Electric, owns NBC.
Might that (little
publicized) fact affect how NBC News re****ts on terror?
In our democracy another slice of the profits goes to finance the election
campaigns of the
candidates who favor warlike rather than diplomatic solutions to
international issues.
Although NBC News et al. are too discrete to mention it, a leading
presidential candidate, a
former Viet Nam bomber pilot, was a wholesale terrorist.
What does that say about our rulers? What does that say about us?
Ed Kinane worked in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness before, during and
after “Shock and Awe.”
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